


Chains Only Break Me

by tobeconquered



Category: The Nanny
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-27 07:09:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18734125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tobeconquered/pseuds/tobeconquered
Summary: “with your wine-stained lips, you’re nothing but trouble”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the song “Chains” by the Sweeplings, if you’re interested :)

Niles tries not to look at her too closely anymore. He heads himself off by flinging insults before they’ve even locked eyes, exchanged a glance. It doesn’t matter so much what she’s wearing or what she’s done with her hair any given day, he goes in for the kill blind because he has to.

  
She makes it difficult when she’s like this though. When she’s worked late and fallen asleep curled up on the green loveseat.  
She makes it difficult all the time, of course, but it is especially so with her arm tucked up beneath her cheek and her Manolos half skewed and forgotten on the hardwood floor.

  
He strangles the insane urge to brush the few stray blonde tendrils that have fallen across her cheek back behind her ear.

  
Leaning down, he reaches to pick up her discarded wine glass instead, still faintly tinged pink, and he realizes later that leaning in so close to her had been his fatal mistake.

  
From his position crouched down in front of her, her scent wafts towards him, something expensive and elegant and enchanting, and he’s afforded a glimpse of her features relaxed and soft, made delicate with the ease of sleep.

He can’t resist the urge anymore, not with her warm and perfect and looking like something out of his, admittedly more tame, but nonetheless favorite dreams.

  
With gentle fingers, Niles reaches up and brushes the errant strands behind her ear and takes a moment to caress her skin in a way that he knew he’d never be allowed in the light of day.

  
He imagines, he thinks, just for a moment that she cuddles into his touch, just a bit, the soft pout on her lips accentuating the rosy stain of red wine, and she sighs softly.  
He echoes the sentiment.

  
It isn’t as if he wants to love her, as if this is easy for him or fun. It’s that he doesn’t have a choice.

  
He’s spent so long, every day for the past fifteen years to be exact, getting to know her. Loathing her, fighting her, teasing her, had morphed seamlessly into wanting her, needing her, loving her.

  
He hated himself for it, nearly as much as he hated her for causing it all. He’d known from the moment he’d met her she’d be entirely irksome, and even here, gentle and serene, making his heart flutter and clench, his first impression holds true.

  
Yes, he hates her all the more for keeping him in chains as she does, holding his devotion without even trying. It shouldn’t be so effortless for her to hold him captive.

  
And yet...

  
He watches as her neat brows scrunch softly against whatever dream plagues her, and softly runs his thumb just there, until the tiny crease she’s caused disappears.

  
It was pathetic how much he didn’t hate her at all, and how much if she knew she wouldn’t care either way.

  
Sighing, Niles raises himself to stand, his knees protesting the length of time he’s spent squatting there next to her. Scowling down at her, he debates for only a moment before deciding what to do next.

  
Sliding his arm beneath her shoulders, she barely stirs, it is only when he has to shift her lower half, tilt her hips and long legs to drape over his other arm that she begins to mumble.

  
“Wha-whass going on?” She slurs just slightly with sleep, and Niles frown deepens.

  
“Shut up. It’s me. We’re going to bed.”

  
To his surprise, she seems content with this answer, because she merely nods and burrows into the crook of his neck as he lifts her, ignoring the pain in his lower back, sure to be sharper tomorrow.

  
_Good_ , he thinks fiercely, as her lips settle lightly against the sensitive skin of his neck and cause shivers, it’s what he deserves for being a damned fool.

  
Babcock may be warm and drowsy and ethereal in his arms currently, but he knows better than most how cold she really is. _A block of ice that could take down the Titanic_ , he thinks, and then stores that away for future use when she's conscious, because it’s rather good.

  
Despite this, she’s surprisingly light for her height and when they ascend the back stairs and her grasp tightens, her nails gently pressing into the hair at the nape of his neck, and her lips mumbling nonsense delicately against his skin, his faltering has nothing to do with the strain of her weight. Though that's exactly what he’ll tell her should they ever speak of this. 

  
It is with relative ease that Niles navigates their way to the guest bedroom in which she's stayed on the many occasions she's spent the night in the mansion, and to his credit, there is only a moment of hesitation, where his hand grasps the curve of her her hip and he takes in her scent, before he deposits her rather carefully in the center of the bed.

  
He wishes he’d thrown her. Even more, he wishes he’d never picked her up at all, because damn the witch, she doesn’t immediately let loose of him and then he’s right there, she’s right there, inches apart with him half kneeling on the bed and her arms around his neck and damnit he can’t breathe, can’t think when her eyes flutter open and she thanks him so soft and sweet he almost doesn’t recognize her.

  
It takes everything he has not to kiss her as she gazes up at him, her features glossed with sleep and her arms lazily disentangling themselves from his shoulders, sliding down so he feels every inch of their departure.

  
They haven't been this near in years, perhaps since that heated night in the living room, and the desire that bolts through him at the memory almost makes his control crack.

  
She blearily holds his gaze until her arms are at her side, framing her blonde locks, and he sees something indefinable in her unguarded expression before her eyes begin to close and the embrace has ended.

  
Niles takes a moment not to move, to instead close his eyes and remind himself who he is and where he is and what will absolutely never happen between them.

He feels his heart clench again and wonders which is more painful, loving her or pretending not to.

  
With a final sigh he pushes away from her and pulls the quilt at the edge of the bed up over her, muttering a quick “Goodnight, Miss Babcock.”

He closes the door on her tender “Butler boy.”

In the hallway, Niles leans his back against the wall, blindsided by the urge he has to cry, to scream or to break something, and just, god, he wishes he’d never set eyes upon her face because she’s absolutely evil.

  
She’s evil in the way she’ll never look at him twice when he can barely tear his eyes away from her, evil in the way she taunts and flaunts and drives him absolutely mad without knowing or caring one bit, without considering him at all, without even realizing he wishes she would.

  
Bringing his hands up to scrub over his heated face, Niles resolves to call tonight a mistake, a cheat. He will go back to doing his level best to ignore her except to insult her, because he’s got to fight back somehow, because old habits die hard, and because in some sad way he will take what he can get. He won’t look at her as closely as he used to or as he did tonight because that’s when things become dangerous for him, too hard and too real and too painful.

  
Back in his room, as he undresses, Niles berates himself for not being a stronger man. Not physically, because that particular brand of strength is clearly still good enough that he can haul her carcass up two flights of stairs and still have the energy to deposit her slowly and gently onto the guest bed.

  
No, physically, he’s fine.

  
It’s his emotions that are the problem. Damn his French mother anyway.

  
Because if Niles were a stronger man, a better man, he’d leave. He’d see the huge warning sign that was CC Babcock’s volatile attitude and signature shortsighted, shallow, arrogant selfishness and he’d run the other way, but unfortunately, he’s weak.

  
Niles is weak and stupid enough to only see her cunning charm, her elegance, her control and determination, her wit and exceptional intelligence, her beauty and strength, and pride and intoxicatingly wicked humor. And he’s caught short, absolutely enthralled by the glimpses he’s caught of her guarded heart over the years, and he won’t, simply can’t, no matter how hard he tries, walk away from her now. Not now, not ever.

  
Not really.

  
Niles punches his pillow as he turns to his side and tries not to think of the way she felt in his arms, the curves of her body pressed against him, the sleepy look in her eyes and tone of her voice, the feel of her fluttering lips, her beauty even as her eye makeup smudged and her wine-stained lips slurred his name, of all the ways in which she's ruined him.

  
He tries even harder not to think that no matter how untenable this situation is, no matter how much it rips and tears at his heart, that for even just a chance of another moment like tonight, he wouldn’t change a thing.


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "tasted a break and I can't get more"

CC’s world is shifting, turning in confusion, and she’s having the strangest dream. It isn’t entirely unpleasant, but she can’t quite decipher it either. Everything is fuzzy and not quite right, but she feels warm and loved, and she figures that’s enough. Or it was. It was just dizzying enough to lull her further, until the moving part.

She doesn’t remember where she is when her eyes finally slide open, and she’s definitely unsure what’s happening when she feels her center of gravity tilt and change. She tries to make her way through the mist of her sleep-addled mind to ask the right questions, she thinks she might even get a few words out before she’s quieted.

“Shut up. It’s me. We’re going to bed.”

She’s got the nagging feeling this should bother her, that something about this can’t be trusted, but she can’t bring herself to care as she feels herself hoisted and gathered the only word that enters her hazy mind is ‘safe.’

So, she nods and lets herself rest in the warmest part of this new space and she tries very hard not to wake up fully, to let her rational mind run wild with what’s happening at this moment because she doesn’t feel like being logical right now. She feels like being carried up to bed.

When the ascent up the stairs begins it jostles her just enough that she has to find purchase. She gets the vaguest sense that she may have been speaking, talking nonsense against the warmth surrounding her, but she’s not quite sure. It wouldn’t be out of character to be arguing with herself.

When she scrapes her nails through his hair, she figures she has to put a name to what’s going on, to the actions taking place and the man who is, quite literally, carrying them out. To her surprise, coming to grips, again, quite literally, with what’s happening here, doesn’t disturb her as much as it probably should. In fact, her stomach merely gives a little unfamiliar, but not unpleasant flip and then they reach the landing and she’s able to relax.

It’s not that she hasn’t noticed Niles noticing her before— even when he is making pathetic attempts to pretend he doesn’t. She isn’t blind. It’s just she’s never paid it much mind or given it much credibility. She’s known for a long time that she’s his favorite game, playmate, some sick version of a friend, but she knows that’s where his regard for her begins and ends. At least, she thinks so.

Moments like these make it less clear.

They haven’t had many, of course, so she doesn’t have much to go on, but there have been times when one or both of them are drunk or sleeping, or, she smiles to herself, _tied up_ , or in some other way made vulnerable, that these uncomfortably sweet or surprisingly seductive situations occur. And CC doesn’t know what to make of that.

She’s grown used to their game, will even occasionally play back if it strikes her fancy, but more often than not she’s grown used to ignoring Niles as much as she can, simply shooting him a dirty look or leaving the room, because he confuses her immensely.

He isn’t typically nice to her, but, she muses he really isn’t typical anything. Niles makes her feel unsteady, unsure, and a little bit out of control, and CC isn’t sure she likes it.

In this moment though, when she’s not bursting with the desire to either strangle him or fuck him senseless, but rather likes the feel of his arms holding her up, confidently lifting and carrying her as if she weighed nothing, she’s surprised, and maybe a little disturbed, to realize she still feels the strong desire to kiss him, in a soft way, a soft, lazy way that could lead to drowsy more.

She resists because, quite frankly, she’s shocked herself, but when she feels him shift her closer against him ever so slightly so he can navigate the door, and she realizes this gentle closeness is coming to an end, she suddenly feels desperate. As lightly as she can, CC sneaks a few gentle brushes of her lips against his neck and jaw that she hopes could be mistaken for accidents, before he deposits her gently on the bed.

She’ll plead unconsciousness should they ever speak of it.

It may not make much sense, even to CC, but nothing much about her interactions with this man ever do.

She briefly gives up the pretense of being asleep when he begins to pull away from her, his strong arms framing her body, and his chest pressed just lightly against hers, and god, she doesn’t want to let go. He’s looking at her so intensely and for a moment her sleepy softness leaves her and it’s all she can do to keep her head still against the pillows — even if she hasn’t quite convinced her arms to disengage from around his shoulders.

All she really wants is to kiss him now, fully and properly and without mercy. She wants to kiss him hard enough and long enough to find out what this is festering beneath the surface between them. She wants to press him and pin down exactly what any, all of this means. She wants to force him to whisper whatever it is against her lips. She wants to taste his confession.

She wants him to lay down beside her and hold her close and not talk at all.

CC is stunned to realize that right now, there isn’t much she doesn’t want or wouldn’t take from him and the shock she feels begins the process of putting her back together, of coming back to who she is, because _this_ isn’t who CC Babcock is, who she’s worked so hard at becoming, and the fact that such a sappy thought even flashed through her mind causes her heart to flutter and skip.

She slides her arms down his slowly, gently, because though she’s already convinced herself she’s thoroughly exhausted and not thinking straight, no one said it would be easy, and lets them rest beside her head.

She doesn’t trust herself to speak, isn’t sure what she might say, so she mutters her thanks so softly she isn’t sure he hears it, but she closes her eyes and turns to her side anyway because she can’t look at his inscrutable face anymore, because the pressure between them is building and she has the sinking feeling that someday it’s going to blow up in their faces.

She doesn’t want today to be that day.

She wants to remember this as one of those beautiful, dizzying, awful moments they sometimes share.

She hears him tell her goodnight, can’t resist whispering back a soft “Butler Boy,” barely choking back his name for the same vague reasons she turned away from his face.

When the door latches, CC turns to stare at the ceiling, places a hand on her stomach which has, in the last few moments, decided to take on its career as an acrobat with gusto, and tries to calm her racing heart.

 _It shouldn’t be this easy_ , she thinks, _for him to rattle me like this_.

This was Niles. Niles the butler who toyed with her and teased her and clearly meant nothing by anything he did other than creating chaos and mischief. Maybe, CC reasoned, this was just a brief pause in the game. She supposed he had stumbled upon her unconscious, which, he’d told her before, was his least favorite state for her to be in unless it happened to be somewhere that would allow him to embarrass her upon waking. The mansion in the middle of the night would not have afforded a big pay-off and so maybe, maybe he had just been doing something nice since there was little point in doing something hurtful.

Underneath it all, and after all they’d been through, she thinks they are at least cordial, at least capable of being something akin to friends. It was just that they didn’t act like it all the time. They couldn’t. It would be insane. There was a rhythm to their interactions, a routine that it would be a shame to overturn now.

Frustrated, she tries to push away the thought that she spends more than she’d like of her off hours trying to analyze her interactions with him than doing almost anything else.

It wasn’t fair that he had this effect, whatever it was, on her when all she was to him was a game. A sometimes friend, on his terms, when he deigned even to look her way. It wasn’t fair he was the one person she couldn’t understand. It wasn’t fair he kept her guessing and reluctantly trying to keep up.

With the hand not resting on her stomach, CC punches the mattress beneath her and tries to suppress a groan. She’s growing tired of this game – one she’d never consented to play in the first place.

Glancing at the clock on the nightstand she sees it’s nearing 1:00 a.m.

She wishes she had a stiff drink, _or a stiff something else_ , she thinks, squirming slightly against the mattress, but she'll settle for sleep.

Sleep will make her forget, will make this all go away.

CC turns back to her side and tucks her hands beneath the pillow, and when she closes her eyes, she isn’t completely surprised that his image swims before her in her mind’s eye, serious and oh-so-close, and her stomach does that little flip that she can't quite identify once again.

As she drifts to sleep she loses the tight reign on her mind that she'd been trying to regain. Her mind wanders and somewhere deep, she knows, even if she would rather die than admit, that despite all the games, the confusion, the frustration, and the havoc their relationship wreaks on her mind and body, that for many years now, undefinable moments like tonight are the ones she likes most.


End file.
